In our regular feature, we investigate Hong Kong’s past and present, with interesting facts, tips, trivia and time travel – and the occasional tricky challenge for readers! We’ll be updating this every month or two, so don’t forget to check back regularly!
Flashback!
The Big Gig
Who’s excited about seeing bands playing live in Hong Kong again? We are! In the meantime, here’s a look back at one of the highest profile concerts the city has witnessed – 56 years ago, when the Beatles visited during their world tour of 1964.
Date: June 1964. Most reports say that the band played on 9 June, but there are collectors’ ticket stubs that clearly say 10 June. Whichever night it was, the band played two shows (the late show started at 9.30pm), to a crowd of around 1,700 people each time.
Venue: Princess Theatre on Nathan Road. The theatre was demolished in the 1970s and is the current location of The Mira hotel.
Cost: Up to $70 per ticket.
Set list: While there’s no official record of the set list, the band’s recent big hits are all likely to have featured – “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, “I Saw Her Standing There”, “All My Loving” and “She Loves You” – along with popular covers like “Roll Over Beethoven” and “Twist and Shout”.
Story of the gig:
- It wasn’t so much the Fab Four as the Fab Three plus one. Ringo Starr was in a hospital in London recovering from tonsillitis. He would also miss the first show (in Adelaide) of the subsequent Australia tour.
- Neither of the Hong Kong shows was sold out because the ticket price was too expensive for the band’s main fan base – teenagers. It’s said to be the only concert in the band’s history where the promoter lost money! Military serviceman made up a big proportion of the crowd; Paul McCartney would later recall that it was mostly a “khaki audience”.
- Despite this report, some fans who attended recall the concert as having the typical throngs of screaming fans – to the point where the music was mostly drowned out.
- The Beatles’ Hong Kong tour is said to have prompted a demand for more rock and roll records and shows, with the likes of The Carpenters and Herman’s Hermits also touring in the 1960s. The Rolling Stones dragged the chain: they didn’t play in HK until 2003
Founding a Ferry
The name Dorabjee Naorojee Mithaiwala may not roll off the tongue, but it’s an important one in the history of one of Hong Kong’s iconic companies. Dorabjee was an Indian parsee who arrived here in 1852 as a stowaway on a ship travelling from Bombay to China.From those humble origins, he went on to become a hotel entrepreneur, founding the King Edward Hotel and perhaps as many as three other properties in Hong Kong.
In 1880, Dorabjee launched a ferry service across Victoria Harbour with a steamboat called the Morning Star – the “star” in the name stemmed from the symbol of his Zoroastrian religion. The trip between Pedder’s Wharf and Tsim Sha Tsui took between 40 minutes and an hour. By 1890, there were four ferries making the journey. Over the next ten years, British-Indian businessman Sir Catchick Paul Chater bought all the boats from Dorabjee, and in May 1898 the Star Ferry became a public company.
Today, around 26 million people each year ride on Hong Kong’s iconic green-and-white Star Ferry. The fleet’s nine boats ply the eight minute route from Central to TST and back again all day, with passengers paying just a couple of HK dollars or so for the privilege.
Go figure!
The Escalator in Numbers
We’ve all been on it – some of us use it every day; Hong Kong’s Central-Mid Levels Escalator is, according to the folks at Guinness World Records, the longest outdoor covered escalator system on the planet. Here are some other stats we uncovered about this unique walkway.
1993 – The year the escalator opened 800 Its approximate length, in metres
135 – The change in elevation, in metres, from top to bottom
782 – The number of steps you have to climb if you choose to walk beside the escalator instead of using it
75 – Approximate number of CCTV cameras on the escalator
6 – The number of days of filming that took place on the escalator in 1997 for the Batman film The Dark Knight (starring Christian Bale and Heath Ledger)
21 – The number of different sections to the escalator
78,000 – Approximate daily usage (number of people) of the escalator in 2016
240 mill. – The cost to build the escalator – $140 million over budget
20 – The travel time from top to bottom, in minutes, if you don’t do any extra walking on the escalator sections themselves
Also… In its early years of operation, the escalator was considered a “white elephant”, as it didn’t seem to achieve the desired effect of alleviating the traffic problems in the area. Since then, however, its usage has grown to three times the original estimates, and it has helped to revitalise much of the urban area it passes through. The escalator is currently undergoing a major four-year renovation, which is expected to be finished by 2022.
Exploring
On the road again
There are more than 860,000 registered vehicles in Hong Kong, which makes for an incredibly busy network of highways, streets and lanes – many of which have an interesting backstory. Here’s our look at 10 pieces of road-related trivia in HK.
#1 The longest road in Hong Kong is Castle Peak Road – which, incidentally, celebrates its 100th birthday in 2020. The 51.5km road runs from Kowloon all the way to near the top of the New Territories.
#2 And the shortest? Well, there are some tiny lanes that aren’t navigable by car (one example is Wa On Lane off Aberdeen Street), but the shortest street that vehicles can use is Lok Kwai Path in Shatin. It’s 12 metres in length.
#3 Tsat Tsz Mui Road in North Point has a tragic background to its name. It means “seven sisters” and refers to a tale of seven Hakka girls who lived in the original village at this spot. When young, they pledged to remain sisters for life, and to die on the same day without getting married. After the girls’ parents arranged a marriage for one of them, they committed suicide together on the beach the day before the wedding. The urban myth developed around a group of seven large boulders located along the shoreline here.
#4 There’s a Hong Kong street name that consists of an English name spelt backwards. Know which one? Well, a Mr Alexander once lived along a particular Mid-Levels terrace, and today the thoroughfare is known as Rednaxela Terrace. Nobody really knows why, though the error is usually blamed on a scribe who was accustomed to reading Chinese from right to left.
#5 That same street is famous not just for its backwards name, but as the temporary home of José Rizal, the Filipino nationalist hero of the 19th century. During his time in Hong Kong (1891-1892), he ran an ophthalmology clinic on D’Aguilar Street, Central.
#6 Russell Street in Causeway Bay has six times been named the most expensive retail street by rental value in the world. It last regained the crown in 2018, replacing New York’s Fifth Avenue, thanks to an average rental per square foot of almost HK$21,000. Not quite so luxurious is the street’s old nickname of “Mouse Street” or “Rat Street”, which it got for the excessive rodent population that was drawn to all the traditional wet markets once found here.
#7 The one-way High Street in Sai Ying Pun was originally called Fourth Street. Why did the name get changed? If you’ve ever been in an elevator whose numbers skip straight from three to five, it’s the same reason: the number four is considered unlucky because in Chinese it sounds similar to the word for “death”. (Fear of the number four, by the way, is known as tetraphobia.)
#8 A large number of Hong Kong street names have a maritime theme. In Shau Kei Wan alone, there are five streets that start with “Hoi” (“sea”). Elsewhere, you’ll find Ferry Street, Pier Road, Shek Wharf Road, Shipyard Lane, Boat Street and over 100 more.
#9 Chinese translations of English street names sometimes go astray, as evidenced by Fir Street, whose Chinese name translates as “Pine Street”. Meanwhile, Pine Street is known as “Cedar Street” in Chinese, and Cedar Street is “Cypress Street”.
#10 Yes, parts of the 1960 Hollywood film The World of Suzie Wong were filmed in Hollywood Road, but the street isn’t named for the famous Los Angeles movie enclave. The name has less glamorous origins, deriving from the family home in Bristol of Sir John Francis Davis, the second Governor of Hong Kong.
Also…
- The highest speed limit of any road in Hong Kong is 110 kilometres per hour on the North Lantau Highway.
- There are over 2,100km of roads in Hong Kong.
- Glenealy is one of the few thoroughfares in the city without “Street”, “Road” or a similar suffix. It just goes as “Glenealy”.
- Hong Kong has approximately 1,300 vehicular bridges, and 15 major road tunnels.
- Many Hong Kong streets (or surrounding areas) have nicknames; they include Cat Street, Dried Seafood Street, Antique Street and Herbal Medicine Street.
Food Focus
5 things you mightn’t know about pineapple buns…
A pineapple bun (or bo lo bao) consists of a soft sweet bun topped with a harder crumbly cookie style crust made of sugar, eggs, flour and lard. When cooked, this crust on top cracks open, giving the bun a pineapple-like appearance on top. That’s where it gets its name – there’s no actual pineapple in the ingredient list. We’re sure you knew that fact, but here are a few other things about this delicious bakery snack that you mightn’t know!
- “Pineapple Bun” was once nominated as a typhoon name but rejected on the grounds that it would sound silly in otherwise serious news reports of the storm.
- The famous snack appeared in animated form in the 2004 film McDull, The Prince of the Pineapple Bun with Butter.
- In 2014, the pineapple bun made it onto the government’s list of 480 “items of living cultural heritage” (along with entries such as fire dragon dances, kung fu and the making of snake wine).
- A Japanese variety of the pineapple bun is the “melonpan”, whose top resembles a rockmelon or cantaloupe.
- Among the famous places to buy the buns in Hong Kong is Tai Tung Bakery in Yuen Long, which has made around 1,000 of them daily for well over 70 years.
Fact file
Sold-out Sunglasses
The 1986 John Woo blockbuster, A Better Tomorrow, starring Chow Yun-fat and Leslie Chung, broke the Hong Kong box-office records of the day and influenced local cinema for years to come. It also influenced lots of young (mostly male) Hong Kong moviegoers, who were so enthralled by the Chow Yun-fat character, Mark, that they tried to replicate his look by wearing long “duster” coats and black Alain Delon sunglasses. In fact, Hong Kong stores are said to have completely sold out of that brand of sunglasses within a week of the movie premiere.
Want to find out more Hong Kong facts and trivia? See our Living in Hong Kong section.
A to Z of Hong Kong Trivia
25 Fun Facts About Hong Kong You’ll Love
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